DeLillo's network

Katie Muth

English Studies

DeLillo's network

• Harry Ransom Center metadata (c. 1959–2013)
• LOD sources (SNAC, Wikidata, VIAF, LC)
• Wikipedia enrichment
• Editor, agent finding aids (HRC, NYPL, CU, Lilly, &c.)
• FictionMags Index
• Stand alone methods test 

What can we mathematise about the American novelist Don DeLillo's (1936–) literary network on the basis of his archival correspondence?

Methods test

• HRC finding aid, metadata + archival notes only
• Correspondence index = 1474 records
• LOD entity resolution + enrichment → identity, birth/death, occupation, publisher/affiliation, bio
• Graph object boundary → giant component 261 nodes (NB LOD skew)
• Provenance-tiered edges → 302 documented, 1704 inferred (bridge entities as edges)
• Weighting, community detection, layout
• Overlays → workshop co-presence + lineage, magazine publishing

Preliminary headlines

• Key brokers: Gordon Lish (1), Philip Roth (2), Joyce Carol Oates (3),  George Plimpton (4), L. Rust Hills (11), Lois Wallace (12)
• 'Program' writers relatively sparse
• Magazine publishing robust
• Four mags house-concentrated: The Atlantic Monthly (C1), Playboy (C1), Esquire (C2), The Paris Review (C1 + C2)
• Of these, two obviously circular: Esquire (Lish), The Paris Review (Plimpton)

Lessons 

• LOD gets noisy FAST
• Catalog ≠ graph object
• Overlays for messy affiliations
• Weighting for LOD skew
• Rigorous curated data
• Strict ontology crucial